A couple years ago, I worked in phone tech support/customer service for a company that makes, among other things, custom-printed books that some people use as mementos for weddings.
Every once in awhile, I would get a call from some newly-married woman who is having…”a fit” doesn’t adequately capture the flavor of the rant directed at me and my company. Her book had some sort of problem with the binding, or one or more of the photos came out slightly dark…and now her perfect wedding was ruined!!!
I usually hit the “mute” button on my phone at that point, and tell the woman sitting next to me, “If I ever get engaged, I’m gonna tell my fiance that, if she ever starts acting like this harpy, I’m gonna tell her the wedding is off.”
My co-worker once said, “But you’ve got to understand, it’s Her Day To Be A Princess.”
ME: “NO IT ISN’T! A wedding is not a one-day chance to be a princess. You want that? Well, then throw a big stinkin’ party, the theme of which is, ‘Jessica’s a princess,’ and all your friends can bring presents for your narcissistic self, maybe build a throne on some kind of pedestal so they can bow down and defer to your awesomeness or whatever, but that’s not what a wedding is for!”
JESSICA: “Um…”
ME: “Look, I’m sorry for ranting about this, but Memory books and trinkets and mementos are…I guess they’re nice, but that’s not what “that day” is all about. All that material stuff is just the wedding industry sucking money out of you, playing on your insecurities. If I ever get married, what’s going to be special about that day is that I’m committing to spend the rest of my life with a woman. THAT’S the memory I’ll take away from that day, not how much the reception cost, or what designer made my wife’s dress, or what company made the sterling at the dinner. All that stuff is un-necessary crap – in fact, having to watch my wife getting stressed out at having to arrange a $25,000 “Event” would actually detract from the day.”
By the time I finished, Jessica was regarding me with a look that said, “OMG, that’s so romantic…” and I sort of mumbled something about having to catch up on emails or whatever.
What I wanted to say to the customer was “Look – did you marry the guy you wanted to marry? Yeah? Are you happy about that? Yeah? Then just…chill!” but of course, wanting to keep my job and all, what I actually said was, “I do apologize for the problem with your book. Let’s see if we can make this right…”
But, here’s the thing.
My parents were married for 36 years, and you could often see them walking hand in hand down Main Street in the town where my mom lives. Lots of people in town were touched by that.
They got married in a little chapel in a little, nondescript town where mom grew up on the California coast, with his and hers family there, and a few close friends. They gave a couple hundred bucks to the priest, and another couple hundred to rent the parish hall for the afternoon. They had a cake from some local bakery, and some of the church ladies cooked up a delicious spaghetti for everyone to eat.
When they talked about their wedding, what they talked about is how blissful they were at the opportunity to marry the person they loved, and how humbly grateful they were for the blessing their wonderful spouse was, and had continued to be. (Dad died in mom’s arms, of cancer, in 1996. RIP, Pops…)
I read somewhere that the average American wedding now costs $25,000, and my reaction when I read that is, “That’s absolutely obscene.”
Bridal magazines encourage a kind of almost pornographic fascination with brand name designers and accessories. The enterprise (and that’s what we’re really talking about here – a business) strikes me, frankly, as depraved, profaning what should be holy, turning an occasion of self-giving into an exercise in juvenile, narcissistic wish-fulfillment.
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